Birth of Mountains - Part One

excerpted from "Coffee Cup Chatter, Volume 1, Number 2" by Professor Schmidt

There really are only two significant theories on the mechanics of mountain formation. This article will lay bare the facts for all to see. I have my own personal favorite, but being the man of science I will remove myself from the equation.

Uplift
Simply stated this is the theory that there are forces far below the ground that exert enormous pressure upward to lift massive amounts of rocks and trees to form the mountains we all love to climb and carve. This process comes in spurts and often is associated with rumbling and shaking of the top-land. Furthermore this process seems to behave in a cyclical fashion, occurring over long periods of time. The mystery of this remained elusive until one day, Carmen Backwater, a Cajun who was mining for salt on a little spit of land that bordered Liechtenstein and Austria. He was deep in his mine when the mountain started rumbling and a void opened below him and he fell a great distance and landed on, of all things, a haystack. He says, and I quote:

“I saw the strangest site I have ever seen. When I crawled down from the enormous stack I found my self in the midst of a gigantic celebration. People were everywhere dressed in funny clothing, dancing and eating and truly seemed happy. As I looked around -- my eyes became adjusted to the strange light that cast shadows in many directions -- I spied something that froze me stone-solid. It was the largest corkscrew I ever saw! [his emphasis]. The bottom point of it was thrust deep in to the ground near to where I was standing, but the top of it pressed hard on the rock ceiling, the very ceiling through which I had just recently fallen. About two thirds of the way up protruding radially and equally spaced were four long handles and on each of these handles sat a griffon. . .”

Well Carmen goes on and on, but I must paraphrase him now for the sake of shortening this article (if you want his full account I am told it will soon be available in his book “Mountain Scews and Mountain Gnomes: A Day in the Life Below”, by Carmen Backwater, esq.).

Apparently, when the mountain gnomes reach a particular population density and run out of room to live, they simply turn their massive corkscrews that hold up their ceilings until there is a pop (which we here on top feel as a rumble). This creates more caves on the edges of their land. Into these are plied rocks sprinkled with diamond and gold dust for some unknown reason.

And this my dear friends is the basic tenets of the Uplift theory of mountain formation, and though I love my friend Carmen like a brother, it must remain a theory until validated by scientists like me.

In the next issue I will cover the “Mountain Egg” theory of mountain formation -- Birth of Mountains, Part Two. ¤